


Winter Olympics

by patchfire



Series: Better than Planned [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Broken Bones, Common Cold, M/M, Pinn Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchfire/pseuds/patchfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The couple that wants to stay together maybe shouldn’t be the couple that needs medical help together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Olympics

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Pinn Week](http://pinnweek.tumblr.com), Day Five: ‘Too Many Feels’. It's a little bit of a twist on 'hurt/comfort' but in the end mostly just fluff, I admit. Chronologically, it falls after [Messy Middle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/806641) and before [Hudson v Dalton Academy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/803988) and [In the End, It's You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/805195).

“Rise and shine! Time for class!” Puck says, sitting on the edge of the bed and grinning at Finn. “Grab your parka or something, it’s hella cold out there.”

“Did it snow?” Finn groans. “Why did I never know you were a morning person until college?”

“Because we didn’t live together until college?” Puck shrugs. “C’mon, maybe there’ll be another snowball fight after lunch, near the fountain.”

“That was fun.” Finn sits himself up and curls his arm around Puck’s waist. “You’re not dressed yet.”

“I just showered,” Puck says, gesturing to his bathrobe. 

“If it was really time to get up, you’d have waited until you were dressed to wake me up.” Finn grins and leans in for a kiss. “Admit it.”

“Well. Yeah,” Puck says, then smirks at Finn, and lets Finn pull him back down onto the mattress. 

When new housing assignments had gone out for the fall, Finn’s third quarter at the University, since he’d done summer quarter classes, Puck had argued successfully for a slightly larger room. Once they’d moved in, Puck had dismantled the standard-issue bunkbeds, and they’d moved in a full-size bed. It was still a little cramped, but a lot better than the two of them crammed into an extra-long twin.

Forty-five minutes later, they’re dressed and almost running late for classes. Puck rolls his eyes at himself; he’s still not sure how Finn had talked him into taking classes ‘to help with screenwriting’, but Puck’s almost positive it had involved blowjobs. 

“Catch!” Finn says, tossing Puck a pack of Pop-Tarts, and then Puck watches Finn tear into a second pack. 

Puck’ll blame it on the Pop-Tarts, but by the time they get downstairs, one Pop-Tart is already eaten and the second one is more than half-gone. No, really, there’s no one to blame but himself, himself and whoever was supposed to sand the stairs and didn’t do a very thorough job, because Puck slides to the side to make room for Finn next to him, and he just keeps sliding. 

His sudden, impromptu near-ballet is brought to an end when the top half of his body realizes that the bottom half has gone on without it, and even as Puck catches himself, he knows what it’s about to do to his hand. 

“Well, shit,” Puck says, sitting up.

“Puck! Are you okay?” Finn asks, crouching down carefully next to him. “You didn’t scrape anything did you?”

“Not scraped,” Puck concedes. “But I don’t think I’m going to make class today anyway.” He gestures with his left hand to his right wrist, and watches Finn wince. 

“Shit, we need to get you to the health center.”

“Just get me up. I’ll go. Go learn about the shit you need to know, okay? I’m fine,” Puck insists, because in the end, Finn’s the one that has to get his fucking degree. No producer’s going to care if the screenwriter got a degree in Ohio or not. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Really.”

“Okay.” Finn smiles at him, the little half-smile that always makes Puck want to drag Finn back to bed, but he settles for kissing Finn before Finn helps him up, and kissing him again after they stand up. 

“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at lunch.”

“Lunch,” Finn agrees, heading to class, and Puck walks carefully to the health center. By the time he’s halfway there, he’s gritting his teeth against the pain, and he’s pretty sure there’s some stupid masculinity thing at issue, like not wanting his best friend-slash-lover to see him in pain, but he makes it to the front desk anyway. 

“Please sign in,” the receptionist says in a friendly enough tone.

“I kinda can’t,” Puck admits. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Oooh.” She looks sympathetically at Puck’s wrist. “Let me go ahead and take you to an exam room. What’s your name, and do you have your student ID on you?”

“Uh, Noah Puckerman. Yeah, hang on.” It takes some stretching, since his wallet’s in his right back pocket, but eventually he gets it out and then finds his ID. He guesses it’s a good thing he’s signed up for classes after all, since all it takes is the ID for them to have a doctor in to look at his wrist. 

The doctor agrees that it’s probably broken, but they take x-rays before casting it anyway. The cast is heavy and pretty much immobilizes Puck’s fingers, too, which sucks. The doctor assures him he can come back in two weeks for a smaller cast that will let him write and type, but until then, he’s pretty much one-handed. Puck sighs and thanks the dude, then takes his casted self back to the dorm room where, he notes, the stairs are now properly salted. He makes it up to their floor before anyone asks him how he broke his wrist. 

“I was trying to ski down the stair railing,” Puck says flippantly, because at least that’s cooler than just falling on the stairs because you’re a ridiculous sap who was thinking about hand-holding being warmer. 

“Awesome, dude!” 

Puck just waves the guy off and lets himself into the dorm, then collapses onto the bed with a bottle of water. The health center gave him painkillers, but told him to wait until he was able to fall asleep to take them, so that’s what he does. He doesn’t fall asleep, just rests, but he barely remembers to text Finn that he’s not going to make lunch. 

Four minutes and twenty seconds after Finn’s class lets out, the dorm room door opens, and Finn bursts in. “Puck! Dude.” He sits down next to Puck. “Does it hurt?”

Puck shakes his head. “Gave me painkillers. They’re supposed to make me sleepy, but I just feel out of it. Not even stoned out of it.”

“Any side effects?” Finn asks, which seems like a weird question until Puck’s brain catches up. 

“Asshole!” Puck laughs. “If there were, you gonna kick me out and get a new roomie?”

“Nah.” Finn shrugs. “You could still blow me, so it’d be okay.” He holds the nonchalant look for a few more seconds before both of them start to crack up. 

“Aww, fuck,” Puck says when they stop laughing. “I seriously can’t jack off, dude. It’s my jacking-off hand.”

“Guess it’s a good thing you’ve got me around?” Finn grins and puts his hand on top of Puck’s belt. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

“Yeah, you’d better.” Puck yawns, even though he’s trying not to, and guesses the painkillers finally caught up with him. 

“You need a nap?”

“Apparently.” Puck shakes his head and yawns again. “Sorry about lunch.”

Finn scoffs. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, tell you what, I’ll go grab some food and bring it back.”

“Mmkay,” Puck mumbles, and he hears Finn leaving the room again before he drifts off. 

 

Finn tries to take care of Puck, anyway. He insists that Puck needs to talk to his professors, which is probably true, and when one of the professors says that Puck’s still got to turn in his assignments, Finn even volunteers to type it. All of that, and the food, is helpful. Finn’s suggestions of things to do, though—not so much. 

The Wii would’ve been a good idea, if Puck could really move his hand. He can’t, though, which means he has to watch Finn play, which isn’t really that exciting. Any kind of snowball fight or outdoor thing is out, even if it doesn’t involve Puck’s arm or hands, because the cast puts him off balance. His guitar is out, too. Finally Puck sends Finn to the KMart with instructions to get as many movies from the discount bins as he can afford with the cash Puck gives him, and that at least lasts for a few days. 

Meanwhile, people ask how Puck broke his wrist, and he comes up with increasingly bizarre stories, wondering when someone’s going to call him on them. After all, the ideas of snowboarding on top of the student center or figure skating on the frozen fountain seem pretty unlikely to Puck, but people believe both stories, even giving him high fives and fist bumps.

“So are you just trying to see what people will believe?” Finn asks. 

“Well, yeah. That, and who wants to admit it was the stupid stairs?”

Finn laughs. “Good point.”

The morning after they watch the last of the crappy discount movies, Puck wakes up to a bizarre noise. His casted arm is propped up on Finn, like he’s been sleeping since he was stupid and broke it. Finn’s snoring, though, and not his usual snoring. He sounds like someone’s sitting on his chest and possibly is holding his nose closed, and Puck puts his other hand to Finn’s forehead for maybe half a second before he realizes the problem. 

“You’re sick, dude,” Puck says quietly, then gets himself out of bed and pulls on sweatpants, t-shirt, and a hoodie, all cast-friendly clothing. He’s pretty sure Finn needs to stay in bed, which means no class, and he does manage to send out painstakingly typed emails from Finn’s laptop to each of his professors for the day. 

After that, he goes to get food, returning with more ramen, bread, cheese, and a few boxes of Easy Mac. He realizes when he gets back that he forgot the Nyquil he meant to get, but he shrugs. There might be a few pills left in a box or something, in the back of a drawer. 

It’s not until he’s pulling his hoodie off that he realizes he accidentally grabbed one of Finn’s t-shirts. It’s not nearly as funny as when Finn accidentally grabs one of his, but he still snorts and flops back onto the bed. “Hey. Dude.”

“Oh, God,” Finn groans. 

“Hey,” Puck says again, a little softer. “I think you picked up a cold somewhere.”

“Fuck.” Finn sniffles and wipes at his nose with his hand. 

“Ew, gross, dude. Get a Kleenex.”

“Do we _habe_ Kleenex?”

“Good point. Get some T.P.” Puck swings carefully back out of the bed himself, and goes to get an extra roll of toilet paper, handing it to Finn when he sits back down. 

“Thanks.” Finn wads up some toilet paper and blows his nose loudly. 

“We’re a pair,” Puck pronounces, and Finn nods. 

Puck tries to take care of Finn, but like Finn’s efforts in the opposite direction, Puck knows he’s falling flat on his face. Ramen and Easy Mac are not, apparently, that good if someone’s got a cold; either that, or Puck just sucks at cooking with one arm. 

Two days into the cold, both of them lying around and wishing their Saturday was being spent differently, Puck decides maybe he should call someone and find out what he _should_ be doing. He figures if he calls Carole, she’ll either tell him what to do or maybe swoop in and bring them shit, if she’s in town. Either way, it’s a win, so Puck finds the Hudson-Hummel land line number and dials it, stepping into the hallway so he doesn’t wake Finn up. 

Puck realizes, listening to the phone ring, that he has no idea what Finn’s told his mom about he and Puck. Hell, Puck’s not sure that he and Finn really have a good name for it. It probably doesn’t matter, exactly; he’s still Finn’s best friend and roomie. 

“Hello?”

“Oh, hey, Mr. Hummel. It’s Puck. Is Carole around?”

“She’s out. You boys doing okay?”

“Uh, well.” Puck looks down at his arm and shakes his head. “I have a broken wrist and Finn’s got a cold, so I was wondering what, you know. He should be doing about the cold.”

“That’s right, Finn told Carole about your wrist. Something about trying to do the luge on campus?” Puck grins as Burt continues. “But Finn’s got a cold, you said? Horseradish.”

“Horseradish. Okay.” Puck’s pretty sure that’s what in the white sauce at Arby’s, and Finn likes that, so Puck can probably manage to drive to Arby’s and get a bunch of sandwiches and sauce. 

“And Nyquil for at night.”

“Yeah, I forgot to grab that the other day when I went to get food.”

“Just got to wait a cold out. How long are you going to have a cast?”

“Another few days in this big one, then four more weeks in a smaller one. It’ll be nice to type again, though.” 

“I bet!” Burt agrees. “You want me to tell Carole you called?”

“Yeah, sure,” Puck says. “Thanks for the tips.”

“No problem.” Burt ends the call and Puck nods to himself. Horseradish. 

It takes forever for him to figure out how to drive with his arm in the cast, and he decides the Nyquil’s going to get bought on campus, where he can walk. He makes it to the Arby’s and gets a ton of the white sauce and then laughs. _Horsey_ sauce. He always thought it had something to do with horses, before. 

Puck drives slowly because of the cast, but he makes it to campus and then into the campus store for the Nyquil. When he gets back, Finn’s awake. “Where’d you go?”

“Horseradish,” Puck says, raising his left hand, then he turns to the side. “And Nyquil,” he adds, showing Finn the Nyquil wedged under his right arm. 

“Arby’s? Huh?”

“I tried to call your mom, but I got Burt, and he said horseradish. So, Arby’s.” Puck sits down and the two of them eat Arby’s with extra horsey sauce before he makes Finn take some of the Nyquil. The rest of the day passes with bad television and cold Arby’s, and it’s probably one of the more boring Saturdays that they’ve had. Still, Finn seems like he feels a little better by the evening, and when they fall asleep, they’re naked and messy. 

Which turns out to be unfortunate, because Puck wakes up the next morning to the sound of two people talking outside their dorm, and before he can figure out who it is, or why, or even take stock of how he’s lying, there’s a key in the door and the RA is letting Carole in. 

She puts down a bag or two, not looking at them as she starts to speak, which does at least mean that the RA closes the door before the whole floor gets a view of them. 

“After Burt remembered that you called, I decided I’d bring the two of you some easy to eat food that would—oh!”

“Uh. Hi,” Puck says. “Finn’s still asleep.” 

“I can see that.” 

Puck realizes that there’s not anything ambiguous about how he and Finn are lying. Well, for starters, they’re lying in a full-size bed in a dorm room, and there’s no second bed in sight. Puck’s not sure if it’s obvious they’re naked, but it’s at least clear they don’t have shirts on, and they’re really cuddling or snuggling or some other cutesy term for it. 

It might be time to own up to some kind of label, Puck realizes, especially since Carole looks inquisitive more than horrified. 

“Dude,” Puck hisses in Finn’s ear. “Wake up. I’m not doing this on my own.”

“What?” Finn blinks and smiles at Puck, then his eyes widen when he looks behind Puck. “Hi, Mom,” he says weakly. 

“I think you boys have a few questions to answer,” Carole says briskly. “Am I the last to know?”

“Mom, I—” Finn cuts himself off to cough and then blow his nose. 

“There’s not something big to know,” Puck says carefully. “It’s not something we announced. Or even discussed.”

“You just fell into bed together?” Carole says skeptically.

“Yeah.” Finn shrugs and grins at Puck. “Pretty much.”

“I don’t think that’s helping.”

“Well, get up and have some soup,” Carole says, and Puck and Finn exchange an uncomfortable look. It does answer the question about whether or not they seem to be naked. 

“Mom,” Finn says, sounding scandalized. “Can you just, you know. Leave the soup?”

“Why?” Carole frowns at Finn. “Come on, get—Oh! I, um. I’m going to go,” Carole says, eyes wide, and she does just that, waving and assuring Finn she’ll call later. 

“Did I just, like, come out or something?” Finn asks, then promptly coughs. 

“I think we did, yeah,” Puck says. “You know we’re going to start getting phone calls soon.”

Finn understands what Puck isn’t saying—that everyone that calls is going to want to know _what_ Finn and Puck are. Friends with bennies? Convenient? Something more? It’s probably not fair, since they haven’t really ever discussed it, but the idea of Finn with someone else makes Puck get pretty pissed off. Love? Of course he loves Finn, he’s his best friend and has been for years. It was one of the things that sucked about L.A., one of the reasons he was willing to come back so easily; he’d missed his best friend. 

“What do you want me to tell them?” Finn asks quietly.

“What do you want to be able to say?” Puck counters, because in the end, he’s still too scared to offer anything first, to open himself up. 

Finn shrugs. “I could tell them anything you wanted.”

“Not what I asked,” Puck says firmly. 

“Dude.”

“Dude, yourself.”

Finn grins, and Puck grins back, and something in Finn’s face finally gets past all the fear Puck feels. 

“Tell ‘em you have the hottest boyfriend in Ohio,” Puck says. “Maybe even the Midwest.”

“Not in the country?” Finn teases softly. 

“I have to admit, I’ve seen the guys in L.A.,” Puck says mock-sadly, and Finn laughs. 

That’s more or less the end of the discussion. Carole comes back the next day to bring them more food and medicine, and does for a few more days; on the last day Carole comes by, Puck gets a new cast and Finn seems to be on the mend. 

“I didn’t dream that the other day, did I?” Finn asks two days later. 

“That’s a pretty general question there,” Puck says. “Dream what?”

“I’m pretty sure you said you were my boyfriend,” Finn says.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Okay.” Finn nods, then laughs. “I kind of sucked at helping you with the cast, though.”

“Yeah, well. I brought you Arby’s and horsey sauce for a cold.” Puck grins. “Next time either of us is sick or injured, we might as well give up on any delusions of taking care of each other.”

Finn laughs. “Yeah, dude. That’s probably for the best.”


End file.
